Where does photography fit with vocation? Photography has a loud voice but the world of my kind of photography (weddings, families, newborns, birth) it feels a bit like a clanging gong. This right now is either the challenge to engage in what celebration offers the world – because I am not clueless or entirely disenchanted with what I do, infact I love it. The internal tangle appears when I google things like Photographers Without Borders and my heart beats hard and fast and I am transported back to that time I met that little girl in a remote Vietnamese village who had to walk a stupidly long way to get to school. But the logistics of such enterprises with two small kids and a mortgage are an impossible fizzy lifting drink and right now the bubbles are all flat. How does one negotiate a suppressed bubble?

“‘Oh, those are fabulous,’ cried Mr Wonka. ‘They fill you with bubbles, and the bubbles are full of a special kind of gas, and this gas is so terrifically lifting that it lifts you right off the ground just like a balloon, and up you go until your head hits the ceiling – and there you stay.'” – From Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Apparently I’ve forgotten how to write. I know I love to write but I don’t do it. Isn’t that the way with so many things. With with relationships, with stillness. We forget, trivialise and fail to invest. Sometimes it’s about not knowing where start or how to keep going. Priorities get hung up on stupid things or things that are by-products of the things we actually want.

What do you want? What really matters? These are questions that should hang around.

I was driving up the mountain one day – at least a year ago now, and there was a car stopped next to me at the lights. A small bird was frantically flying at and crashing into the drivers side window. Fly, crash, repeat. It was weird. There was a wonderfully ominous storm cloud at the top of the mountain. It fit together so well that I often think of it. Maybe we’re like that bird? Too invested in our own reflection to be properly connected with who we are.

I am a little bit shocked that it was January 2015 when I last wrote anything. In some ways I have no space to write any more. But then perhaps this is what is necessary – to carve that tiny bit of space, to find mental space again? The no space thing is probably a lie. And yet, the last year has been full full full and sleep deprived. I’m waiting (still) for that to improve. Claire is nearing four, Céleste nearing two. Surely the sleep thing gets better. I know it gets better. I can’t believe I didn’t throw an epic party to beat all parties when Claire improved, I can’t even remember when that happened? It was worth celebrating, I’m waiting Céleste.

I turned 30 this year. I threw a party. I don’t like parties very much but I did like this one. It was at night, there was fairlights and a fire-pit and my music and no kids, it had a coffee cart and donuts (oh my the donuts from ShortStop are stunning) and it had good people. I like being 30. I actually kind of feel like things are settled and paced (despite the daily madness that I can’t seem to escape). It’s fun seeing what life looks like with two kids even if the balance is an almighty juggle between being a decent parent/human and running my own business and finding space for myself. I suck at the last one.

I do think that I am perhaps on the cusp of working this balance thing out despite the fact I’m not sure we ever actually do, and it’s surprising me writing this down, as I am brain dumping from being sick in bed (which is pretty much the only time I stop). As always there are things in my life that could be cracking along MUCH better but there ARE things that I am doing well. I feel like I write this same thing over and over in my head. Nearly there, nearly there. Keep on, keeping on, such is this phase of life.

Life I want to live you but I want to observe you at the same time… from my bed with a cup of coffee.

What a ridiculously full and wildly normal and at the same time crazy ten years. Thank you for those who have read and commented and I pray that some of my sharings/learnings/failures may have helped in some small way along the way.

This blog was only ever meant to be a head dump. And it still is. I sometimes have used it like a journal/a letter/a writing exercise sometimes it has been inundated with memes and lists and cooking experiments and photos but mostly it has been for me a quiet companion along the way (sometimes a narcissistic indulgence) – a way for me to record milestones and dig out memories both from my brain in the moment and later in looking back. It is a reference point for me, a consolation at times and and encouragement to see where things once were and where they are now.

This place has been a little empty the last few years as life has exploded into happening. I am not using this occasion to call this place quits. It can linger. I can drift in and out as I please and I don’t even mind much if anyone reads it.

To catch you up (for those who do still read): this week we bought a house (yes there’s madness for you – as this all happened within the last month) and I was thinking back to before I got together with Geoff (and got married not too long after) and something God was speaking to me about – having never been one for even envisaging getting married young (and then having kids youngish) etc. – why did some of this stuff (in the scheme of life) happen so fast? And in His graciousness he let me know is that he didn’t want me being ‘preoccupied’ with certain things more than I had to, that he has other things for me to do. Life will continue to get on with itself so I can get on to what he has for me. This is a big call and I baulk at thinking what on earth are the implications of this are for my daily living. So much of life has just come along at a terrifyingly merry (not always merry) old pace, ticking boxes. It is a bit ridiculous and I feel a bit like God has indulged me at times (perhaps he likes us or something) but It certainly hasn’t seemed terribly fast when we’re in the midst of getting up at 3am to feed babies , or always good and has seemed much more round about with all our – ‘moving yet agains’. I firmly believe that God does use us at our present time and wherever we are but mostly I guess I am very ready for that head space to open up once more and turn my life a bit more outward again to see what is next (or maybe actually what is right there in front of me already).

When I was younger (younger than this blog is old) I loved the Psalm about the ‘flowers of the field’:

Psalm 103:14-18

14 for he knows how we are formed,he remembers that we are dust.15 The life of mortals is like grass,they flourish like a flower of the field;16 the wind blows over it and it is gone,and its place remembers it no more.17 But from everlasting to everlastingthe Lord’s love is with those who fear him,and his righteousness with their children’s children—18 with those who keep his covenantand remember to obey his precepts.

and there is somewhat parallel image in Matthew 6…

Matthew 6:25-34

25-26 “If you decide for God, living a life of God-worship, it follows that you don’t fuss about what’s on the table at mealtimes or whether the clothes in your closet are in fashion. There is far more to your life than the food you put in your stomach, more to your outer appearance than the clothes you hang on your body. Look at the birds, free and unfettered, not tied down to a job description, careless in the care of God. And you count far more to him than birds.

27-29 “Has anyone by fussing in front of the mirror ever gotten taller by so much as an inch? All this time and money wasted on fashion—do you think it makes that much difference? Instead of looking at the fashions, walk out into the fields and look at the wildflowers. They never primp or shop, but have you ever seen color and design quite like it? The ten best-dressed men and women in the country look shabby alongside them.

30-33 “If God gives such attention to the appearance of wildflowers—most of which are never even seen—don’t you think he’ll attend to you, take pride in you, do his best for you? What I’m trying to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God’s giving. People who don’t know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works. Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don’t worry about missing out. You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met.

34 “Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.

Perhaps the next ten years will look a little different. Or maybe completely the same. Whatever the case, God is doing things right now, I just hope I am a little more aware of what’s going on and the fuzziness of the last few years of sleep deprivation and logistics of moving multiple times and trying to work out our place in the world can subside into something that breathes of it’s own accord and gives us life.